Military

A Homeland Denied
In the Footsteps of a Polish POW
by Irena  Kossakowski

A Homeland Denied follows the horrific journey of Waclaw Kossakowski, a young Warsaw University student whose peaceful life was changed dramatically and with far reaching consequences that fateful day of 1st September, 1939. From imprisonment in the notorious Kozelsk prison to the forced labour c... more...

A Scottish Blockade Runner in the American Civil War
Joannes Wyllie of the steamer Ad-Vance
by John F. Messner

Born in 1828 near Kelso in the Scottish Borders, Wyllie went to sea as an apprentice seaman in 1852 and quickly rose through the ranks.  By 1862 he had gained his masters certificate in Liverpool, and there he took command of his first vessel, the Bonita. He sailed for Nassau, then a booming po... more...

Airman Abroad
by Hamish Brown

A revealing picture of a time when Britain was losing its empire. It draws on letters written at the period by an airman, his vivid memories and experiences from the Canal Zone, Kenya during Mau Mau times, Cyprus and Jerusalem. His time encompassed conducting church services, being shipwrecked, nume... more...

Assyrian Identity and the Great War
Nestorian, Chaldean and Syrian Christians in the 20th century
by Bülent Özdemir

Translated by L.M.A. Gough ‘I agree with Professor Özdemir that there was no genocide of ‘Assyrians’, but a total migration of Nestorians (with attendant casualties), and a gradual and partial migration of Syrian Monophysites and Uniates, with fewer casualties’. Dr. A... more...

Britain and the Bomb
Technology, Culture and the Cold War
by W J Nuttall

This is a very British story from more than 50 years ago. It is a story of remarkable technological ambition from a different country than is seen today. It was an era in which the country adjusted to decolonisation and a dangerous nuclear arms race close to home.  The maturing Cold War enginee... more...

Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards
America’s Scottish Bastion in the Cold War
by David Mackay

The American military presence in Scotland during the Cold War was greater than in either of the World Wars, bringing with it the largest peace-time number of foreign military personnel in Scotland’s history. This military power was delivered by individuals – the forgotten heroes. They w... more...

Camp 165 Watten
2nd edition
by Valerie Campbell

This is a new and expanded second edition of the best-selling first edition. The author has provided an in-depth historical account with new information on a number of prisoners including the eminent Professor Klaus Eggers; Karl Haensel, a former rear gunner who remained in Caithness after his relea... more...

Dictionary of Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships from 1905
by Thomas A. Adams, MBE

Royal Fleet Auxiliaries are distinctive in the maritime world civilian-crewed Merchant Navy ships owned by the Crown working under naval orders. This Dictionary showcases both the famous and the often overlooked ships that have supported the Royal Navy during its prominence in the twentieth century.... more...

Dive Palau
The Shipwrecks
by Rod Macdonald

Recounted with his usual level of meticulous historical research, Rod weaves an easily readable account of the build-up to and implementation of Operation Desecrate 1 – the raid undertaken to destroy Japanese ships and aircraft in the lagoons of Palau. He uses his intimate knowledge of shipwre... more...

Dive Truk Lagoon, 2nd edition
The Japanese WWII Pacific Shipwrecks
by Rod Macdonald

The 50-mile wide lagoon of Truk Atoll, far out in the remote expanses of the Pacific, is quite simply the greatest wreck diving location in the world. Scores of virtually intact Japanese WWII wrecks of transport ships, still filled with cargoes of tanks, trucks, artillery, beach mines, shells and ai... more...

Diving for Treasure
Discovering history in the depths
by Vic Verlinden, Stefan Panis

This book recounts the efforts over many years to dive wrecks that contained treasure in one form or another. The often prolonged and sometimes dangerous expeditions tell of dives to many ships that were wrecked while carrying tons of gold or other valuables. Many of the wrecks came to lie at great ... more...

Engineering Hitler's Downfall
the Brains that Enabled Victory
by Gwilym Roberts

Whilst living in Liverpool, Britain’s second most heavily bombed city during World War II, the author experienced at first-hand the terrible effects of the war on the civilian population and when studying at Cambridge he witnessed the American heavy bombers and their fighter escorts flying to ... more...

Enigma: The Untold Story of the Secret Capture
Vol. III of The British Navy at War and Peace Series editor Captain Peter Hore
by David Balme

David Balme will be forever known as the 20-year-old hero who, on 9 May 1941, boarded a German U-boat in mid-Atlantic, and captured one of the greatest secrets of the Second World War. This capture – or ‘pinch’ as it was known within secret, inner circles – changed the course... more...

Force Z Shipwrecks of the South China Sea
HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse
by Rod Macdonald

The tragedy of the loss in 1941 of two Royal Navy capital ships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, the core of Churchill’s deterrent Force Z, stunned the world. Churchill had hoped that sending a small powerful squadron of ships to Singapore would deter a threatened Japanese invasion of Mal... more...

Great British Shipwrecks
by Rod Macdonald

For more than 30 years, internationally acclaimed wreck diver and best-selling author, Rod Macdonald, has surveyed and researched shipwrecks around the world. His books such as Dive Scapa Flow and The Darkness Below are household names in the diving world. In Great British Shipwrecks Rod uses his... more...

Hitler's Early Raiders
by Robert  McQueen

Focusing on the so-called 'Phoney War' at the start of World War II, this well-researched account concentrates on incidents when Britain stood alone during those tense and dark early days of hostilities. The book contains graphic accounts of enemy action including two major attacks on ele... more...

Island Base
Ascension in the Falklands War
by Bob McQueen

Extract from the Foreword: Much has been written about the war, but very little about the island base, Ascension Island, which was crucial to our success. This book explains how the island was an essential stepping stone in the execution of a daring plan in response to Argentinian aggression. ...La... more...

Kabul: Final Call
The inside story of the withdrawal from Afghanistan August 2021
by Laurie Bristow

On 15 August 2021, the world watched in horror as Kabul fell to the Taliban, almost exactly 20 years after western-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. During those 20 years the United States, the United Kingdom and their allies tried to build a... more...

Luftwaffe over Scotland
A history of German air attacks on Scotland, 1939-45
by Les Taylor

Luftwaffe over Scotland is the first complete history of the air attacks mounted against Scotland by Nazi Germany during World War Two and undertakes a detailed examination of the strategy, tactics and politics involved on both sides, together with a technical critique of the weaponry employed by bo... more...

Not Really What You'd Call a War
by Norman Hampson

Dedicated to the ship's company of La Moqueuse, this book is not so much an account of naval operations as a kind of social history. With the help of recollections, diaries and letters home, it recreates the reactions of an undergraduate to his various reincarnations as an ordinary seaman in a c... more...

Outrageous Fortune
by Bob Maslen-Jones

This is the story of a young medical student's coming-of-age as he watched the defeated British Expeditionary Force shuffling through Oxford in May 1940, and his decision to forego a privileged life that would have led to the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream of becoming a surgeon. After ans... more...

RAF Bomber Command Striking Back
Operations of a Halifax Crew
by Alan  Measures

In the early hours of 26th June 1942, six airmen from 102 Squadron return from Bremen in their Halifax, Q for Queenie, having taken part in the third Thousand Bomber Raid. These airmen formed a truly international crew, each one having an interesting back story that had led to their being together, ... more...

'Rosy' Wemyss, Admiral of the Fleet
The Man who Created Armistice Day
by John Johnson-Allen

Rosslyn Wemyss’ life and career was both fascinating and brilliant – a most distinguished admiral who is very little known.  As the Allied Naval Representative at the Armistice negotiations on 11th November, 1918, he left an indelible mark on the life of this country when he was res... more...

Salt Horse
Memoir of a Maverick Admiral, Claude Lionel Cumberlege
by Robin Knight

Written originally in 1936–38 by Admiral Cumberlege as a record of his life, Salt Horse was never published. The original manuscript has been expertly edited and made readable in terms of language to a modern audience.  It now comprises chapters on Cumberlege’s naval career in the R... more...

Tales from the Forgotten Front
British West Africa during WWII
by John Wade

In November 1943, four years into World War II, Corporal Sid Wade, a conscripted and reluctant soldier in the British Army, was uprooted from a cold English winter and transported to the tropical coast of West Africa. Sid Wade was the author’s father and, nearly 70 years after his two-year sti... more...

The Baltic Cauldron
Two Navies and the Fight for Freedom
by Michael Ellis, Gustaf  von Hofsten, Derek Law

The Baltic Cauldron commemorates several centuries of Anglo-Swedish relations, which, after events in Eastern Europe in 2022, have acquired a new resonance as a record of the struggle for survival and independence of nations bordering the Baltic. This is a history of navies in the Baltic Sea and its... more...

The British Navy Series
series editor Captain Peter Hore
by Mervyn Wingfield, A. Bentley-Buckle, David Balme

* SPECIAL OFFER - buy the trilogy for the special price of £40.00* For full information about each book please visit their individual page Wingfield at War Through Albert’s Eyes Enigma, the untold story of the secret capture ... more...

The Enigmatic Sailor
by Alan Peacock

An essential further dimension to the ENIGMA story of code breaking. The part played by code-cracking in World War II has at last been dramatically revealed in a popular film and also inspired several accounts by code-crackers and countless broadcasts. Much less well-known is how code-cracking... more...

The Nearly Man
by Mark Bridgeman

The Nearly Man is the true, yet almost unbelievable, story of one man’s incredible life, beginning in rural Scotland in the reign of Queen Victoria, and ending on the west coast of Canada in the 1970s. In one of the 20th century’s great untold stories we travel with Francis Metcalfe on a... more...

The Victorian Naval Brigades
by Arthur Bleby

There is a view that, in Victorian times, whilst the Army was engaged in a series of wars, the Navy enjoyed a peaceful existence - however, this was not the case. Complemented by authentic engravings, this book relates in fascinating detail the significant role that was played by the Naval Brigades ... more...

They Were Just Skulls
The Naval Career of Fred Henley, Last Survivor of HM Submarine Truculent
by John Johnson-Allen

This compelling story is the result of many hours spent recording the memories of Fred Henley. His life at sea is at the centre of his being and his own words are at the heart of the book. At the age of 14 Fred worked on a Thames sailing barge, then after his training at HMS Ganges, he joined his fi... more...

Through Albert's Eyes
Vol. II of The British Navy at War and Peace Series editor Captain Peter Hore
by A. Bentley-Buckle

The autobiography of Tony Bentley-Buckle, a child of the Empire who was left to grow up in the care of maiden aunts. Having joined the Royal Navy before the war, he found himself on the Northern Patrol during the blockade of Germany and as a teenager in command of captured ships. When he brought a s... more...

West Coast Support Group
Task Group 96.8, Korea 1950-1953
by M.P. Cocker

This illustrated portfolio is produced upon the 50th anniversary of cessation of hostilities and as a remembrance of the ships of Task Group 96.8. Through extensive research the author has gleaned information about the multi-national force, including numerous photographs. Ships of the Royal Navy, Ro... more...

Wingfield at War
Vol. I of The British Navy at War and Peace Series editor Captain Peter Hore
by Mervyn Wingfield

Captain Mervyn Wingfield was one of the last of his generation of submariners who made their reputation in the Second World War. Pre-war he had served on the China station and lived the riotous life of a young officer; in the war he commanded three submarines, Umpire, Sturgeon and Taurus, survived a... more...